I am the president of a PTO that recently had some treasurer difficulties and I am unsure of the legality of the steps that should be taken. Our treasurer mixed up her checkbook and the PTO checkbook and wrote three checks for personal items on our account. When the mistake was brought to light she instantly repaid the money. The secretary and I took over the treasury duties and we noted the incident in our treasury book and monthly reports. We are not currently a 5013c but hope to start that process. Can we get in trouble with auditing if we dont file an incident report with the police? Several of my board members feel this is a necessary step. I have contacted our sheriffs department and they have said that we have no gounds to press charges. I feel the incident is over but I dont want to misguide our group if it can hurt us later. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank You.

LC Pres
:eek:

The money was repaid, she was relieved of her duties and the sheriff's department has already said there could be no charges, so I would probably just let it drop.

I don't see how this incident would cause problems down the road with your 501c3. But I am curious how the incident came to light. This might be a good time to ensure your PTO has the proper financial controls in place to minimize the chance that something like this could happen again.

I agree with Critter. When I write a check, it has to have two signatures on it. Always mine and then the presidents or our teacher representive can also be a co signer. You can set that up as a requirement with your bank. That may be very helpful.

You're not going to have any problems whatsoever with this. Sounds like it was a legitimate mistake and was brought to the proper attention right away, and resolved satisfactorily. I do hope that the Treasurer was not asked to step down over a mistake like this...

Persoanlly I don't like the two signature requirement. As long as the president maintains comunication with the Treasurer, and keeps apprised of the transactions, everything should be fine. We use the PTO Manager program to keep track and I obtain copies of the bank statements and periodically verify against the accounting program. So far no issues.

In addition, both the Treasurers and myself have a "company" credit card and it makes life so much easier. Since we make most of the purchases for the group we don't have to worry about getting a check, knowing the proper amount, who to write it out to, etc. I simply use the card and provide the receipt to the treasurer.

Good luck,
PresidentJim

If this was an honest mistake, I'd bet the checkbook is a pretty standard format with a non-nondescript "ordinary" cover. You might want to jazz up the cover or replace it with something unique so there's no chance of it being mixed up again.

At our house we have 3 checkbooks (his, hers, ours). When I carried the PTO checkbook, that made four with plain dark covers. I never wrote out of it by mistake, but I did pick it up by mistake now and then and end up with the wrong one in my purse. Add some distractions, maybe a crying toddler - it could have happened.